I hate to jump on Burrito Justice a third time today, but they just keep churning out such solid content. This time, it’s a proposal worthy of an emergency Planning Commission hearing at the very least.

As you can see in the above diagram, the plan is to facilitate a smarter St. Luke’s expansion by closing Valencia to auto traffic (between Chavez and Mission) and turning it into a park — Valencia Street Park — thereby creating an inviting plaza for hospital employees, neighborhood folk and everyone else to congregate.

See the whole meticulously outlined plan, as well as the other (boring) plans currently under consideration, right here.

5 Responses to “Valencia Street Park”

I’m all for greening this stretch of Valencia– there’s only one traffic lane and a bike lane in each direction, so there is plenty of room to add trees and shrubs to the existing traffic lanes. But that one traffic lane is necessary for traffic– Guerrero has limited turns, Mission is backed up with traffic, Tiffany and Duncan are blocked off to through traffic, and Cesar Chavez is already going to be narrowed. Without that one lane for cars, it would be difficult to drop off sick people at the hospital, and the gridlock of the nearby stretch of Mission that delays the 14 and 49 buses will worsen. Let’s see what happens with traffic with the plan to remove a traffic lane from Cesar Chavez before creating more gridlock.

An urban garden would be great. But remember there isn’t another stretch of grass or trees nearby — the area is pretty parkless. Given the number of strollers in the neighborhood a playground sure would be nice.

As for the laundromat — if there really were a useable, active public space I’d expect different use of the neighboring retail. On a side note, it’s interesting that the Kragens, car stereo place and the Aamco are in a space that was originally the Sears tire shop and auto center.